Final Outcome
Mystery Box was my first fully animated short at uni, the premise was simple- animate a character discovering an object. We first had to come up with three ideas, which for me ended up being: 'A man finds himself in a strange location with only a locked door in sight', 'A treasure hunter stumbles upon something very valuable', and lastly 'a cowboy comes across an odd coin.'
In the end, I chose the last option as it was a simple idea that fit our time constraints while also giving me the opportunity to work on my background art skills.
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When starting work on this short, the first part I had to tackle was the background and location. While I had a rough idea of what I wanted from the thumbs I had created, I needed to develop them further.
I started off with a basic shoebox concept of the field location and where the coin would be placed. This was then developed into different camera angles where I worked on the composition more, to make the backgrounds as visually appealing as I could.
The last step was colourising them and sorting out the overall palette, I wanted to really push the warm tones in this animation to make it seem like a hot summers day.
With the concepts done, I moved on to the characters. The first to tackle was our Cowboys horse, which I soon learned where hard animals to draw if you've not tackled them before.
I first went over some colour variations, using different well-known horses as inspiration. (Picasso a popular wild mustang, Black Beauty, Red Rum, Saint Boy and Champion). In the end I settled on the Champion-inspired coat, as it was a mix of easy to animate due to markings while complementing the cowboy nicely and fitting into the landscape without looking like a sore thumb.
Our cowboy, nicknamed Valentine while working on him he was a design I had been bumbling about on the back-burner for some time and thus I didn't spend ages on creating him for this short but just drew out his character to get to know the sort of person he is.
I find the more you draw characters the more you uncover who they are, rather than forcing the design to fit a neat little box.
Looking back, however I can agree maybe green wasn't the best choice for his outfit due to the backgrounds sharing similar tones to him.
The backgrounds. Since year 1 of uni I have wanted to specialise in background design so I used this project to push my skills in that area, trying to create compositions that work and create awe while also keeping consistency between shots.
I really feel I pulled this off in this animation and was able to pull everything together to make a charming little short.
